


Martian Girl

by littleskywatcher



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: F/F, wizardly NASA
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 01:03:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13447215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleskywatcher/pseuds/littleskywatcher
Summary: Kit "Kitty" Rodriguez is a trans girl and a NASA engineer, I'm sorry I don't make the rules. (This started out as a three-things prompt for Mellie ages ago and has evolved a lil, so it gets its own work now. Enjoy!)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SilentMachina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentMachina/gifts).



> Kit "Kitty" Rodriguez is a trans girl and a NASA engineer, I'm sorry I don't make the rules. (This started out as a three-things prompt for Mellie ages ago and has evolved a lil, so it gets its own work now. Enjoy!)

A shiver of anticipation crawls up Kit’s spine as her team crowds around Vincent’s computer to watch the live feed from their lander, and she laughs at herself. She’s already heard from her contact on Mars that the lander has made it safely, even though her team has (she squints and does some mental calculations) about three minutes before the OK signal will reach NASA’s monitors. She knows it will be all right–it _is_ all right–but she looks around at the faces of her teammates and can’t help but catch the shivery nervous excitement that’s filling the room. Even the veterans of the bunch have a glimmer in their eyes.

She’s been an engineer with NASA for almost a month now, and managed to stick with the team she’d been shadowing during her Pathways internship. Eventually, their lander is set to investigate the deposit of water ice below the surface of Utopia Planitia; it’s by no means the first robotic visitor to the frozen underground sea, but it will be the first with the express purpose of determining its usefulness for the Martian astronauts. Kit pulls out her WizPhone and double-checks the lander’s readings for what seems like the millionth time since she’d gotten the ping that it had entered Mars orbit, pretending to check the time. Cindy catches her checking and laughs–“I think your hot date can wait, Kitty,” she teases–and Kit shrugs sheepishly, tucking the device back into her skirt pocket with a smile.

The excitement grows as they watch the lander faithfully report its descent progress and continue the constant stream of atmospheric and spectral data that it had started transmitting as soon as it entered orbit several hours ago. (It wouldn’t be a martian lander if it wasn’t a multipurpose tool, after all.) Vincent has a feed from the onboard camera displaying on the adjacent monitor, and the tension becomes palpable as they watch the Martian surface zoom towards the camera. Everyone winces at the low-gravity bounce–inevitable, but they don’t like to see their baby tossed around–then holds their breath, and–

 _Chrreeeep!_ goes the computer, the sound it’s been programmed to make upon receipt of the “OK” signal, and the screen displays a cheerful green message before surface data scrolls along underneath it, and the roomful of engineers bursts into applause. Suddenly Kit’s being hugged by half the room, and someone is singing, and her phone is buzzing in her pocket but she’s too busy grinning to answer it. Cindy takes her hands and spins her in a circle, and Vincent booms, “Miss Rodriguez, you’ve just witnessed your first successful landing as part of the engineering team. How do you feel?”

Kit’s smile widens. “I never dreamed I’d get to be a part of _this_ side of the Martian effort,” she admits, trusting that her colleagues will assume she means the NASA side. As a teenager, she’d always pictured herself as a strictly wizardly member of the Mars team. She’s since learned that testing and redesigning rovers isn’t as far from troubleshooting group spellwork as she’d initially thought.

The room rumbles with good-natured laughter at her response–she’s the youngster of the team, the laughter acknowledges, still starry-eyed over the whole project. Vincent chuckles, too, then glances at the clock in mock surprise. “By golly, it’s lunchtime!” (Everyone echoes “I didn’t even notice!” “My, how time flies!” in varying tones of unsurprise.) He makes a shooing motion with his hands. “Go forth and find sustenance, you’ve earned it! I’ll see you in an hour.”

The team scatters, and Kit’s just checking her phone to see Nita’s query about a lunch date as Cindy catches her by the shoulder. “Hey, Kitty,” she starts, and she’s smiling, but Kit suddenly feels nervous. “I was wondering…” Kit holds very still. “Which side of the Martian project did you think you’d be on?” Before Kit can figure out what she’s asking, Cindy plunges forward and says in a rush, “Maybe the two sides aren’t as different as you think…cousin.” Kit’s eyes widen but she relaxes, and Cindy grins again, relieved. “We’ll talk more later. Enjoy your lunch date!”

“ _Dai_ ,” Kit manages finally, once she’s almost out of earshot. Cindy had used the Speech-word _hrasht_. She shakes her head with a bemused smile as she texts Nita back, “WE LANDED ON MARS!!! Not that you don’t already know that. And _please_ tell me you haven’t already discovered wizardly NASA and been hiding it from me, because boy, do we have some things to talk about over lunch…!”


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey, Martian Girl.” Nita greets her in front of the caf, grinning.

Kit’s practically bouncing up and down as she takes both of Nita’s hands and squeezes a return greeting. “We did it we did it we did itttt!!” she cheers, turning their joined hands into an impromptu dance hold and briefly turning her partner in a circle.

Nita laughs and lets herself be dipped. “Nerd,” she tells Kit affectionately, and Kit sticks out her tongue. Hand in hand, they walk into the caf and grab trays. Kit spends a moment smiling about coincidences and how on any other week Nita would be up north at Ames--she’d managed to talk her adviser into letting her come down to Pasadena for the landing. Now she gets to give Nita a blow-by-blow of the landing (and last night’s practically all-nighter to make sure everything on the surface was prepped)  _ in person _ . Nita gasps and laughs at all the right places, actually clapping her hands in delight when Kit gets to the part when the lander communicates its success to the group, even though she’d “overheard” the high emotions at the end from her temporary office across campus.

“I’m so proud of your team,” Nita says once Kit’s run out of steam. “And your baby,” she adds with a wink. Kit only blushes a little--she’s spent so much time and energy on both sides of the project recently that Nita’s taken to teasing her about her forthcoming race of rover children and how she should consult Dairine if she needs any Mothering advice. Kit checks her phone; her hour is almost up and she’s barely touched her food in her excitement. She eats at top speed, kisses Nita’s cheek goodbye (she’s already got her nose in a précis from her Ames team’s work, making notes in the margins of her Manual), and is at the door to her office before she remembers she was going to mention NASA wizards. She shrugs.  _ Another time _ , she thinks, and pushes it out of her mind for the time being.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to optimvsprinceps and cousininthebronx (both on tumblr) for the beta!  
> disclaimer: i have never played d&d in my LIFE.

It’s almost a week before Kit manages to catch Cindy by herself again, and Cindy laughs at her once she does--“It’s not like I’m not in the directory.” she teases gently. “You could have just pinged me in the manual.” Kit laughs, too. It genuinely hadn’t occurred to her.   
  
“Wizardry feels so much like a secret society sometimes that I forget it’s something that, you know, I already have access to,” Kit admits. They’re walking across the campus together after their weekly group meeting. She swears she never saw so much sunshine in her life before moving to Pasadena. The day is so warm and bright that it seems silly to even be mentioning secret societies.   
  
“I guess I know what you mean. Wizards can be fond of their intrigue, especially when you’re as  _ sevarfrith _ as we can be here.” Cindy takes out her ponytail as they walk, shakes her blonde hair loose for a moment, and pulls it up into a bun, looking aggrieved. “It’s so hot today! If this is spring, what is summer going to be like?”   
  
“Still not as humid as a New York summer!” Kit points out, but she’s definitely grateful for her much shorter hair.   
  
“I guess you have a point. I swear it gets hotter as I get older, though--I never remember it being this hot when I was younger! March and 95 already? Powers save us.”   
  
They walk in companionable silence for a minute, until Kit ventures, “So how many of us are there, do you know? I met a handful of wizards when I was at MIT, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a handle on the total number of us involved in any one organization.” She’s still so used to flying under the radar that it’s strange to be talking about wizardly colleagues out in the open. She feels vaguely like she’s talking to an unexpectedly chatty undercover agent.   
  
“A fair few. The sciences tend to attract a fair number of wizards--the same sort of interdisciplinary problem-solving mindset that makes a good wizard also makes a competent scientist, haven’t you noticed? Sometimes even our rover collab group feels like working on an intervention, as I’m sure you noticed.”   
  
Kit had. “I always picture Vincent as the grumpy Senior-analogue for our group.”   
  
“Me, too!” They both laugh for a minute. “I had an advisor who was similar enough growing up that when I started working for Vincent I called Allan to ask if they were related. They’re not, more’s the pity--not that it always runs in families, but Vincent would be handy to have on errantry, I’d think.”   
  
“A little scary, possibly, but handy,” Kit agrees. Vincent has a tendency towards single-mindedness when faced with an upcoming deadline, and she spends a moment entertaining the image of that single-mindedness confronted with the Lone One. The thought makes her grin: she almost feels bad for It, were that the case.   
  
“Anyway, as far as I know it’s just us in our team, but Carlos is working on the Europa project and is the best liaison with microorganisms I’ve ever met. Seriously, he gets so much more from a conversation with a single-celled critter than I feel like I can get from some humans on his team. You can bet the minute the Clipper finds suitable signs, he’s going to be on Europa making sure the little one-celled aquatic dudes are feeling appropriately appreciated. Danika is a geomancer on our side of the NISAR project, but of course we have a lot of folks on the other side, too. Ummm, who else--”   
  
“Sorry, NISAR? I’m still learning my way around all the acronyms.”   
  
Cindy makes a face. “Oh God, I’ve become That Government Contractor who uses too many acronyms. Sorry! NISAR is, let’s see, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar. ISRO is the Indian Space Research Organization, in Bangladore.” She closes her eyes, thinking, and adds, “‘The NISAR satellite is designed to observe and take measurements of some of the planet's most complex processes, including ecosystem disturbances, ice-sheet collapse, and natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides.’”   
  
“I know someone who might be involved on that project,” Kit says, thinking of Mehrnaz. Then she gives Cindy a sidelong glance. “You sound like you’re quoting.”   
  
“I, ah, might have that particular mission description bookmarked.” She’s blushing a little more than makes sense, Kit thinks, but she doesn’t push. “Anyway,” and maybe Kit’s projecting but Cindy sounds relieved Kit isn’t pressing her, “Tyrone is in the outreach department here, and I’m not quite sure of his specialty except that he has an unusually keen eye for picking out younger wizards. Annah does a lot of work with orbital systems--she’s on the team who’s doing some wizardly research into the ‘rogue planet’ that they’re thinking might be out beyond the orbit of Pluto. Outside of wizardry, she’s on the WFIRST team--that satellite that’s supposed to help with exoplanet research, as well as some dark energy and IR stuff.” She rolls her eyes, amused. “You know NASA, the Alton Brown of space research--”   
  
“--no single-purpose gadgets!” Kit finishes with her, chuckling. It’s one of the current JPL director’s favorite sayings about mission development.   
  
“But yeah, with you and me, that’s six of us that I know of, and Tyrone has mentioned suspicions of another one or two, but unless we all get called on errantry or something there’s not really a way to ask each other unless we get lucky.” She winks. “That’s a keychain on your office keys, by the way, the NASA logo one that says ‘The Martian Thing’ in the Speech? I almost didn’t notice it at first. Where’d you get it?”   
  
“I was wondering what had tipped you off! My girlfriend had it made for me when I got approved to stay on with the team after my Pathways position ended. It’s kind of an inside joke we have with a group of friends. I did a lot of Mars work from the wizardly end of things when we were teenagers.”   
  
“That’s adorable, oh my gosh. Can you share the story?”   
  
They find a bench in the shade, and Kit launches into the surface details of her involvement with all things Martian, and how it’d gotten to the point where all her friends would finish her sentence with her whenever she started to talk about ‘the Martian thing’. She’s so involved in the retelling of a side story--it’s _so nice_ to be able to talk openly to someone about the wizardly work that inspired her current professional interests--that she doesn’t notice they aren’t alone until someone sits down on the bench beside Cindy. Kit freezes, guilty: she hasn’t been trying to mask her language, and wonders how she could plausibly explain herself to a nonwizard…   
  
“Found another convert for your Pathfinder group, huh, Cindy?” says the newcomer warmly, and Cindy laughs. It’s not nervous laughter, it sounds just as full of good humor as the half-dozen or so other times she’s laughed while talking with Kit (she seems to do that a lot). She doesn’t seem bothered at all by the fact that Kit’s been openly discussing wizardry in front of a presumed nonwizard. Kit tries not to fidget.   
  
“You know me, out to convert the world,” she replies. “I think I’ve just about convinced Kit to join our new campaign. You’re always welcome if you want, John,” she adds, with the air of someone repeating a longstanding joke.   
  
“Wizards and aliens?” John scoffs good-naturedly. “Not my cup of tea, but thanks. I prefer my science to be fact-based, not fiction.” Cindy sticks out her tongue at him, which he ignores. “Are you coming to frisbee this weekend?”   
  
“Wouldn’t miss it! We’re definitely going to beat you this time, FYI.”   
  
“You wish! Want to meet at the Metro station again?”   
  
“Sure thing. I’ll see you then.”   
  
“See you then.” John stands. He nods at Kit. “I’m sure we’ll see each other around. Have a nice evening!” Turning to Cindy, he smirks, “Enjoy your aliens, nerd.”   
  
“The truth is out there!” Cindy calls after him as he walks away. She turns back to Kit, who is trying very hard not to burst out laughing.   
  
“Do you normally pass off wizardry as Dungeons and Dragons?”   
  
“Oh, you think I was joking? We literally have a Dungeons and Dragons group. We used to be a mixed bunch, but the other members sort of...drifted out, so it’s just the five of us mostly--Annah, Danika, Carlos, Tyrone, and me.” She pauses, and smiles. “We really are about to start a new campaign. It would be a good excuse to meet the others, and you know what they say about coincidences...”   
  
Kit’s been thinking about coincidences, too. “I’ve only played once before,” she warns, “and we had a terrible DM, so I’m not sure how much help I’ll be.”   
  
“That’s totally fine! Annah is our DM, and she’s fabulous, and she’ll be super excited to have a newcomer to boss around. What are you doing on Friday night? Say, around 7?”   
  
Kit grins. “I guess I’m going to go play D&D with a bunch of wizards.”


End file.
